Janice Day, the Young Homemaker Part 25

"Let us hear all about this in due order," laughed Broxton Day.

"I can see that you are far too much excited to go promptly to bed. Explain yourself, my dear."

When he had heard it all, he did not appear to be as much impressed as Janice expected him to be. It was a small chance, in his opinion, that the girl who had broken Mrs. Latham's dish was the same Olga who had for two months held sway in the Day kitchen.

"But we will make a pilgrimage to the cottage on the back of the Latham farm," Daddy promised. "If I can get away from the bank early to-morrow afternoon, we will go. I know the place, and there is a family of Swedish people living there. Of course, by chance, it might be Olga your friend Gummy followed home."

"Oh, no! It would be providential, Daddy," Janice declared, smiling. "You say yourself that Providence is not chance."

"True," he agreed, with gravity. "If we get back the treasure-box, with all in it, I shall be very, very thankful indeed, and shall consider it a Providential happening."

"Daddy, dear!" whispered Janice.

It was at these times, when they spoke of the lost treasures, that Janice was so heart-stricken because of daddy's expression of countenance. Those letters from her dear, dead mother, which her father prized so highly, were continually in Broxton Day's mind. She realized it was a loss that time would hardly mend.

"And all my fault! All my fault!" she sobbed when she was alone in her bedroom. "Had I not been so dreadfully careless Olga would never have got hold of that box when she was mad and run off with it. And suppose she doesn't think the things in it are worth much? She might throw them away!"

So, despite the good time they had had at Stella Latham's party, Janice went to bed in no happy frame of mind.

Sat.u.r.day was bound to be a very busy day; and Janice did not wake up early. Daddy left a note for her on the table saying he would be at home with some kind of a conveyance not long after the bank closed at one o'clock.

She knew what that meant. They were to ride out to the Johnson house and make inquiries for the girl, Olga. Janice was sorry she had slept so late, for Mrs. Watkins expected her to do what she termed "her share" of the work.

"If your pa lets you sit up till all hours, so that you're not fit for anything in the morning, should I be blamed?" complained the faded-out lady. "I'm sure I have enough to do every day, and all day. I have got to have some help on Sat.u.r.days and that is all there is to it."

Janice knew well enough that the reason the work piled up so upon the last day of the week was because it was allowed to acc.u.mulate through the other days. But the kitchen floor did have to be scrubbed. It was a sight!

If the woman would only mop it every other day it would not be so bad; but it seemed to Janice that Mrs. Watkins would just wade through dirt to her knees in the kitchen before she would use either mop or scrubbing brush.

It was true that daddy did not often look into the kitchen, now that there was somebody supposedly capable of keeping the room, as well as the rest of the house, in order. And Janice was glad he did not look around the house much.

Such training as she had enjoyed under her mother's eye had made Janice thorough. Mrs. Day had been a thoroughly good housekeeper.

And she had always kept so well up with her housework that there were never any difficult jobs left to haunt one, and her house looked always neat. Nor was she obliged to keep half her prettily furnished rooms shut up to keep them clean!

Janice did all she could on this short Sat.u.r.day morning. She had first of all to he sure that daddy's room was dusted--every bit.

Then there were the halls and stairs to do. After those, the porches must be swept.

"For you know," sighed Mrs. Watkins, "it looks so much better for a child like you to be out sweeping the porch and paths than what it would me."

Janice could not quite understand this reasoning. But she knew it must be a deal easier for Mrs. Watkins to rock in a chair in the house than to wield the broom. That went without saying.

She did not think of lunch, although the faded-out lady did not neglect her own. Janice was down on her hands and knees, with scrubbing brush and pail, when the housekeeper carried some savory dish or other into the dining room.

"I presume since you had your breakfast so late you will not care to eat now," said the woman. To tell the truth, a tear or two dropped into the strong soda water in the pail.

"Though I don't believe salt will help start the grease-spots on this floor," Janice thought, rubbing her eyes with the wrist of one hand. "There! I am a regular cry-baby. I said I would do something to relieve daddy of bothering about the housework. And if scrubbing a floor is the best I can do--"

Suddenly a shadow appeared at the door. Janice looked up and squealed. There was daddy himself--at least an hour and a half too early.

"Well, well!" exclaimed Broxton Day, rather sternly, "what is the meaning of this?"

"Dirt on the floor boards--scrubbing brush--elbow grease,"

retorted his daughter, making vigorous explanatory motions.

"Didn't you ever see a 'scrub lady' before, Daddy?"

"Humph! so there is a Cinderella in the house is there?" he said.

Mrs. Watkins opened the dining-room door. She was swallowing a mouthful which seemed to go down hard. Mr. Day's unexpected appearance disturbed her.

"Oh, Mr. Day," she cried, feebly, "have--have you had your lunch?"

"I have, Mrs. Watkins," he replied. Then to Janice: "No matter how much you may like to scrub floors, my dear, you will have to leave this one for Mrs. Watkins to finish. There is a car at the door. I have borrowed it for a couple of hours, and you must make haste and put on something different and come with me to look for Olga."

"Well," Janice got up from her knees slowly.

"Hurry," said daddy sternly. And he stood and waited until Janice went out of the room.

"So you will not have lunch, Mr. Day?" asked Mrs. Watkins coolly.

"No. But there is one thing I will have, Mrs. Watkins," he said sternly. "I will have you attend to your work, and not put it on Janice, while you remain here!"

"I do not understand you, sir," said the woman, her nose in the air.

"Let me make myself plain then," said Broxton Day. "I will not pay you wages to s.h.i.+ft such work as this," pointing to the scrub-pail, "upon my daughter. I want that understood here and now. I can no longer give you carte blanche at the grocery and provision store. I will do the marketing myself hereafter. You will furnish the lists."

"Sir?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Watkins haughtily.

"I have kept tabs on the accounts this last week. In no seven days since I was married have the expenses for the table been half what they have been this week."

"I am not used to a poverty-stricken household, Mr. Day!" sneered Mrs. Watkins.

"But you soon will be," Broxton Day told her grimly, "if I let you have a free hand in this way. I am not a rich man, and I soon will be a poor one at this rate."

"I want you to understand, Mr. Day, that no lady can demean herself."

"Wait a moment," said the man, still grimly. "I did not hire you to be a lady. I hired you to do the housework. I can't have you here unless you keep your share of the contract. Please remember that, Mrs.

Watkins."

He left her abruptly and walked through to the front of the house. He saw that at her place on the dining table was the remains of a broiled squab-chicken--a very tasty bit for a hard working woman like Mrs. Watkins.

"Are you ready, daughter?" he called up the stairway.

"Just a minute or two, Daddy," replied Janice.

She felt that they were in trouble again. All she had tried to do to keep him from knowing just how badly things about the house were going had been for naught.

But she winked back the tears and "practised a smile" in her looking gla.s.s before she ran down to join daddy on the porch.

There was a big touring car out in front. Janice knew it belonged to the vice-president of the Farmers ad Merchants Bank.